One shot, three seasons: Summer in the lawn, fall in the trees and winter on Pikes Peak.
Deadlines suck. Like The Turk, I’ve been indoors more than I care to be lately, in my case generating bicycle comedy for fun and profit (well, for profit, anyway, and only just barely). This is particularly irksome because we’ve been enjoying a stellar fall here in Bibleburg. It’s 76 right now — 76! — at 5:45 p.m. on Oct. 15. Imagine my amazement.
This will change, as it must. Tomorrow and Sunday look pretty damn’ nice, and wouldn’t y’know, I have to clock in for a couple of shifts in the old VeloBarrel. Come Monday, the weather should become a bit more seasonal, as in 50-something with a chance of showers. Ick.
After that, it’s the Colorado lottery, which means exactly what it sounds like — a total meteorological crapshoot, which I must say keeps life interesting, like the wining jug in John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row,” a punch blended by understudy barkeep Eddie using any booze left in glasses by the patrons of La Ida. A Palace Flophouse roommate, Jones, first pans, then praises the concoction:
“You take whiskey,” he said hurriedly. “You more or less know what you’ll do. A fightin’ guy fights and a cryin’ guy cries, but this —” he said magnanimously — “why, you don’t know whether it’ll run you up a pine tree or start you swimming to Santa Cruz.”
That’s the sad part. Pine trees we got. But Santa Cruz … not so much.
Tags: Fall, Journalism, Turkish
Mad Blog Media 
October 16, 2010 at 10:17 am
We’re enjoying a genuine fall season here on the soon-to-frozen plains of Iowa too! Last year at this time we’d already had snow but that’ll be here soon enough. Took a ride yesterday with our local cycling “club” but soon enough we were on the edge of town and the morons started that old pace line thing where, instead of riding at a more-or-less constant speed, each bozo jacks it up a few clicks when he hits the front. After closing the gap a couple of times I tired of the game, let ’em all go and rode on my own. I’m too spoiled from riding with experienced racers (or ex-racers but in any case riders who can ride an efficient, organized double paceline)to put up with bozo antics like this these days.
October 16, 2010 at 7:50 pm
‘Ick’ That’s not the journalist I know.
October 17, 2010 at 1:43 pm
ONeill — If Mr. O’Grady continues to use colloquialisms such as “Ick”, he will soon lose his reputation as a level-headed, even-handed, conventional-wisdom-dispensing, observer and commentator — “The David Broder of the West”. I prefer to think that he was making some elaborate connection to the situation in the European Union, and had meant to write “Ich” — the German first-person singular pronoun — but simply mis-typed it. Surely he will be back to his old self by his next post.
I hope not, anyway.
October 17, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Actually, that was a typo. It should have read “Ack,” which as you know was a favorite saying of Bill the Cat, a character in the late, lamented Berkeley Breathed strip “Bloom County.” This makes the exclamation not only journalistic (it’s a quote, plus journalism is full of typos, especially these days), but artistic (in the right hands — not mine — a cartoon can be art).
October 17, 2010 at 3:27 pm
The excuses are now showing up in your work! Will you use the same lame excuses you use on the bike?
October 17, 2010 at 3:39 pm
No — old, fat, slow and drunk are not acceptable excuses in journalism, as all journalists are old, fat, slow and drunk.